Second Act (22 page)

Claudia rubbed at her temples. Dear Diana. To thin
k
Caspar actually wrote a script for his farce.

*

All across the city, women walked the streets in fear. Official proclamations had been posted. No journey to be undertaken unless it was absolutely essential, and on those journeys, women should be accompanied wherever possible. Fine for the rich, but there remained a large sub-section of the female population who had no option, other than to risk it. And these women trembled.

Opinion on the rapist was divided. Either the wrong man had been executed last time round, or else this was a copycat. Either way, they could not afford to take chances.

The rapist
might
only snatch one victim a day. Then again, he might not.

Women all across the city prayed. To Jupiter, to cast his thunderbolt of justice on the rapist. To Nemesis, that retribution would be harsh.

*

Any doubts Claudia might have harboured about the Halcyon Spectaculars not hitting the professional standards she’d been hoping for were dispelled the instant Caspar appeared in full stage regalia to lead her to her seat. For the two hours building up to this dress rehearsal, there had been no activity whatsoever in the atrium, not even from the labourers. Just a loud, empty silence, reminding Claudia what it would be like when the troupe packed up and moved on, only without the gaudy canvas backdrop for company. Hell, so what?

(a) she enjoyed living alone,

(b) it afforded her all manner of freedoms unavailable to most Roman women,

(c) she was accountable to no one and nothing,

and so on and so on went her list of counted blessings until she reached the letter
m
in the alphabet.

(m)
M is for Marcus Cornelius,
a little voice said, so she quickly skipped
m
and continued the list of reasons why alone is best, with:

(n) being that she had a wide double bed all to herself and

(o) —

(o) is for a man who smells of sandalwood with a faint hint of the rosemary in which his clothes had been rinsed, and whose baritone is as evocative as any actor’s and—and
—
oh
,

(p) off, she told the voice.

And because Claudia comprised the entire audience for this dress rehearsal, she felt it would not do for the critic not to meet the same exacting standards required of the cast. For that reason, and not because of any Security Policemen roaming round the house, good heavens no, she took extra care in dressing. The gown of midnight blue and trimmed with gold that showed off her breasts to best advantage. The little brooch shaped like a leaping dolphin, her favourite. The gold chain round her left ankle, which led the eye towards a flash of shapely leg. Why should that be affected by tall, dark investigators on the loose?

‘Dear lady, you positively snatch the breath from my body,’ Caspar said, having called at her bedroom to escort her to her seat.

‘The feeling is mutual,’ she replied honestly.

Colourful at the best of times, his costume as Narrator was prism combined with rainbow then mixed with a very big paddle. It took a moment or two before it registered that the spots before her eyes were, in fact, a collage of stylized fabric fruits sewn on to a plain apple-green robe. Figs, melons, apricots, mulberries, cherries, raspberries and grapes proliferated round his ample form.

‘You approve?’

‘I certainly do.’ Claudia linked her arm with his. Any man who goes to such lengths to impress the punters is all right by me, she thought cheerfully, reflecting on her own plans for the Saturnalia banquet.

It did not cross her mind that Caspar’s, or indeed anyone else’s equally dazzling costume, might be a distraction. That it was eye-catching for that very reason. To catch the eye—and thus draw attention from the face.

Killers like to observe. Not to be observed.

*

In the end, Claudia had not been able to get the quiet word in Skyles’ ear that she had hoped. During dressing for the rehearsals, the company’s quarters had been off limits to anyone not part of the production, and that, apparently, included the mistress of the house in which they were staying.

‘Time is so of the essence on these occasions,’ Caspar had explained, adding that he most truly hoped the dear lady would not be offended, but the schedule needed to be timed to the same accurate perfection as the water clock in the atrium, which, incidentally, he had moved, because although its drips did not interfere with the show’s timings, alas the same could not be said of the whistle and ping which marked each passing hour.

Fine. There was no hurry to speak to Skyles. In fact, the longer Flavia stewed in her own stupidity, the longer she had to reflect. Sadly, with most girls fifteen is mature. More than old enough to know their own minds, choose their own husbands, run their own households, plan their own babies. Thanks to Julia’s coddling, Flavia couldn’t plan her own wardrobe, although immaturity in itself wasn’t a problem. Girls grow up fast. Fact of life. Flavia’s problem lay in that, caught between the rock of her father not wanting her and the hard place of being fostered on an aunt who wasn’t given the option, she’d developed selfishness to an art form. She neither noticed nor cared that image was the diet on which Julia, the daughter of a lowly road builder, had grown strong. That image was the yardstick by which Julia measured her life. Or, therefore, that image was the one thing that could destroy her—

Right in the middle of Felix’s balletic miming of the Judgement of Paris, and just as Claudia was wondering how to bring Flavia to her senses and make her realize that Skyles wasn’t remotely interested in the stupid little cow, she caught a faint whiff of sandalwood.

‘One simply cannot get the staff these days,’ a baritone murmured, easing itself into the seat beside her. His chin no longer resembled a hedgehog, and his dark eyes were clear. ‘Would you believe I found my trunk outside on the pavement? Fully packed, too? Tch. And when I’d left strict instructions for it to be unpacked, as well.’

‘It’s probably homesick, trying to make its way back by itself. Why don’t you humour it?’

‘You know, anyone would think I’m not welcome here.’ He winced as Felix performed the splits.

‘Yes,’ she agreed, clapping. ‘Anyone would.’

If, in rehearsal, Felix had been magnificent, in costume he was sublime. Considering he was playing four characters with only soft cloth masks to differentiate the roles, and considering that three of the characters were female, it was amazing. Felix was more than capable of earning his living by going solo with just a flautist to set the mood of each scene. He didn’t even need the young castrato to sing the story. But there was comfort in group companionship, she supposed. As well as emotional security.

‘What do you know about these people?’ Orbilio whispered, applauding loudly as Felix retired from the stage. Quite a few of the slaves had slipped in to watch, Claudia noticed. Leonides, the cook, several of the boiler-house boys, half a dozen of the kitchen girls (to swoon over Skyles, most likely), plus a small contingent of the cleaning staff, too.

‘What’s to know?’ she replied as Skyles, dressed as Augustus in imperial purple and with a laurel crown over a cropped wig, strode on to the stage with Doris, as the Emperor’s lushly adorned wife, on his arm. Her agent’s report echoed in her head. There is nothing on this man at all, he insisted. He is self-made in every sense of the word.

‘What do I
do
all day?’
Skyles boomed, and dammit he even sounded like Augustus.
‘
Livia, darling, haven’t you seen the giraffes I’ve brought back from the African plains? The black bulls from Spain? The lions from the Syrian desert?’

‘
Exactly. All you do is play zoo
—
’

That was it. Chip-chip-chip at the political scene. Nothing too contentious, just a gentle poking of fun at the expansion of the Empire, and fingers crossed Livia won’t take offence or we’ll all be facing lions from the Syrian desert. Seated on the floor with her back to the pillar, Flavia applauded Skyles’s every word and movement, funny or otherwise.

‘You men are all the same,’
Doris-as-Livia said.
‘I
suppose you think it’s easy, being a woman, while you’re out potting Germans and Gauls all day long?’

Beside her, Orbilio stared at his thumbnail. ‘I apologize for the subterfuge, but I felt it was necessary, because of the Halcyon Rapist.’

‘I do have a bodyguard,’ she reminded him sweetly. ‘Or is one Security Policeman better than six lowly slaves?’

‘…
Livia, darling, last year I built eight-two temples. All you did was weave me this shirt
…’

Claudia clapped, not so much because it was a funny line (indeed the humour came not from the script but in the fact that the scene was set inside a humble thatched cottage, another dig at the Emperor’s asceticism), but because she didn’t want Caspar to think his satire was so poor that it made her attention drift. Beside her, Orbilio understood and said nothing until Jemima, Hermione and Adah came on to perform the first of three song-and-dance routines. Since they weren’t acting, the girls weren’t obliged to wear veils for this part and, versatility being the name of the game, they played their own percussion instruments. Hermione’s lisp was unnoticeable when she sang.

Orbilio leaned sideways in his seat. ‘It occurs to me that the rapist might be an actor,’ he said.

Claudia swallowed. ‘Because of the mask?’

‘Not entirely.’ He gave a broad beam of encouragement to the girls, but the smile didn’t extend to his eyes. ‘The rapist only strikes during the winter solstice, which just happens to be when most strolling players are in Rome. He’s also a man with a pathological hatred of women, who has the ability to stalk his victims without arousing suspicion.’

‘He could be any one of several entertainers, not just actors,’ she said. ‘An itinerant musician, an acrobat, a juggler, a rope walker.’

‘I’m sure he is.’ He turned round to face her. ‘I’m just not prepared to take any chances.’

‘Well, he’s not one of the Spectaculars, that’s for sure.’ Jemima, Adah and Hermione left the stage, and Erinna and Fenja took their place, but Claudia barely registered the change. ‘After all, I think I’d know if I was harbouring a monster under my roof.’

A muscle tweaked at the side of his mouth. ‘You didn’t know I was here.’

‘Oh, you’re like a draught. You sneak in anywhere.’

‘Thanks. It makes a change from being told I’m a load of hot air. But the point is, Claudia, I’m worried.’

‘Orbilio, I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.’

‘If you were able to take care of yourself,’ he countered mildly, ‘you wouldn’t be so wary of the Security Police. But shabby as it is to admit to such base needs, it’s not just you I’m thinking of.’ He drew a deep breath and held it. ‘There’s been a shift in policy at Headquarters. My boss insists it’s purely political, but whatever the reason, he’s handed the case over to Dymas.’

‘Then let Dymas have the headache of solving it.’

‘I can’t,’ Marcus rasped, and suddenly he looked ten years older. ‘Because of me, an innocent man went to the lions. I have to make that right.’

Claudia pleated the folds of her dress. That’s the trouble when you keep saving the world, Marcus. After a while, the world comes to expect it.

‘Silly question,’ she said, ‘but you have spoken to last year’s victims?’

‘Some.’ He rose to his feet and called for an encore, but she could see his mind was elsewhere. ‘Unfortunately, so deep was the trauma that it’s virtually impossible to draw the girls out.’

He spiked his hands through his hair. As a member of the same sex as the beast who’d perpetrated those brutalities, how could he explain how it felt when he saw the victims recoil physically—and sometimes violently—when he and Dymas had knocked on their doors?

‘All we’re doing is forcing the victims to relive the agony,’ he said thickly. ‘They don’t deserve that.’

One had trembled and started to whimper. Another curled herself into a ball and howled like a wolf. One screamed her lungs out. One clawed at her own flesh, drawing blood. Worst of all, one, like the Damascan girl Deva, had even tried to commit suicide. Only that poor bitch had more success.

‘What makes you so certain you didn’t put the culprit on trial last time?’

‘That’s the trouble. I
was
sure.’

He waited until the intermission between the second and final routine before outlining the evidence that had nailed the man he and Dymas believed to be the Halcyon Rapist. Information through street contacts that led them to a suspect. The mask beneath the suspect’s bed, which tallied with the description the victims had given. The strong smell of aniseed on his clothes.

‘Crucially, of course, the suspect signed a confession.’

‘Wouldn’t you, under torture?’ Claudia countered.

‘He was a citizen,’ Orbilio replied with the ghost of a grin. ‘Not Captain Moschus. He was never put to the torture. And anyway, it was immaterial. Three of the victims identified him.’